I'm sure you can find some career where you don't have to work well with others. For instance, janitors work all alone in the middle of the night. Or if you become a high-powered-enough professor, you can publish all of your research by yourself.

Ah, I have decided never to become a professor, but that janitor thing sounds pretty cool...

You know what I realized when trying to think up something to say? There are not very many professions where you don't have to work with other people. You can't sell anything, because then you have to deal with the customer. You can't be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, or most of the common professions. Even an author has to deal with a publisher, an agent, and possibly a publicist. The only really solitary professions, where you are entirely free to do your own thing (so long as you keep your work to some standard) are the ones where people don't want to have to see you, like night janitors. Or can you think of any others?

Well - I have been known not to work well with others either, but have a highly successful practice not only requiring me to work well with others, but manage others well! You and I can adapt to our "unnatural environments" and grow from them, but certainly there are plenty of opportunities in life to work pretty much alone and enjoy it! One opportuinity that I am beginning to pursue is invention development. I think that the big obstacle to working well with others is the combination of having a high level of intelligience with a high level of expectation in an environment that that simply cannot appreciate/know either. This is said not to place value on anybody over another, but rather recognize differences between people. When your choices are either reducing your standards of quality and timeliness of work or "take the bull by the horns" and just do it mostly yourself - it doesn't feel good either way. Not that working with those of similiar talents and ambition is easy - (any two people working together has its challenges!) - but it's more of a "rewarding challenge" vs. the other being a frustrating, no win, just get the job done, type of situation. Good luck.

Diana - Because you have the combination of high intelligient and high ambition, how do you manage being in work groups that don't share these characteristics? I am trully curious. I have a feeling that you might have an effective way to motivate people - which is a skill that doesn't come easy for me.

Well, for one thing, I am usually in work groups with people who are highly intelligent and highly ambitious, often moreso than myself. This is because I am able to work alone except when I don't understand what is going on, and then I have to work in groups where people can explain it to me. This work tends to be of a sufficiently high level that only intelligent people self-select into such classes. So I am fortunate to seldom encounter the situation you describe.

However, I do have to motivate people sometimes. I believe that the only way to effectively motivate other people is to bring out the intrinsic motivation they have within them. You have to find a part of what you are doing that the person finds truly interesting, and help them to capitalize on that.

For instance, sometimes students come into the resource center stuck on a math problem, and what they would really like me to do is just solve it on the board so that they can copy it down -- they just want the answer; they have no motivation for doing this problem other than wanting full credit for it. But if I can ask them questions to lead them through the process of solving it, they will usually have some sort of insight about how everything fits together. They often say something like "oh, neat!" which is better than "okay, thanks, bye." I also always draw a picture on the board of what is going on whenever possible so that they will gain insight into what is going on, because learning something about pictures means something in the world, whereas solving equations has less meaning.

This summer I worked in the housing office with adults who were neither very intelligent nor very motivated. I did not have to motivate any of them to do anything, but I did motivate myself to do things like filing and making posters by finding something interesting in it, like looking for people's names I recognized and looking to see what meal plan they were on.

Sometimes it is a stretch to be motivated, but it is a lot easier to start with a shred of intrinsic motivation and capitalize on it than to try to create motivation from nothing, where there is none.

[This is really weird, to write something on the operating assumption that I have high intelligence and high ambition. It makes me feel like I'm being snobbish. Eek.]

It's not an assumption regarding your intelligence and ambition and you should not feel snobbish to be so. I think snobbishness (? a word?) comes from the attitude of believing you are more important than another and you don't show that to me. I appreciate your answer to me question. I had a feeling that you have been more accustomed to groups you would fit into and therefore have had less frustrating experiences like Becca speaks of. I think that is one advantage to private schools over public schools (meaning pre-college). The demographics are quite different. Your thoughts on motivation are good - both for others and ones self. I think being such a strong self motivator, I have a hard time understanding others who require more of a push. Mix that with an inherent impatience and that means I struggle with the effort it takes to motivate others. But - it is interesting that I don't believe I have any problem motivating my patients, nor am I at all impatient with them. Hhhmmm. I love a good discrepancy to throw a wrench into the pattern... I have something new to try and figure out about myself...

I think that there may be a value to paying for education, because it makes you value it more. Even when I was not paying my own tuition, I was very aware of the fact that it cost money and that it was a privilege to go there. I think that this underlying knowledge helps to make people work harder, because if they don't, then they might as well not be there. In my experience, people who were not motivated sometimes stayed on, but many of them left. Public schools cannot give students this choice.

I am not really sure who comes to your gym, but my understanding is that they are people who at least like to exercise; otherwise they would be doing regular rehab -- is that right? In that case, something is motivating them to do exercise, and thus they have motivation to work hard in rehab so that they can do exercise. I would guess that your patients don't have much trouble with motivation. Is that the case? Also, you may be motivated to not get impatient with them because they (or rather, their insurance companies) pay your salary, which is not a trivial consideration.

Many people who come to rehab while having a strong desire to be well, lack the motivation required to put in the full effort to stick with the program, especially when there is pain and sweat involved. I play a role of coach to keep them at full effort. Actually, I think that I work so well with my patients because the results of their rehab reflect back on me - to them first, but also to others like their doctors. I do know that money (or the fear of its loss) would not reign in my impatient nature. I would just get another job if I felt that way :). No, it's rather my pride that motivates me to motivate my patients. When they look and feel good - I look and feel good. And that's not bad.